“She’s—” he swallowed.
“She is still alive. I think she is twenty, maybe a bit older—or younger—in this picture.”
“She is looking at Severn,” Random said. They both turned toward her.
“Does she want to kill me?” he couldn’t help asking.
“Yes? No? I don’t know. But she was looking at you, because I was standing beside you in my vision. Things are difficult in that then—you’ll see. That’s not now.”
He set the sketches aside and took his seat. He almost abandoned it, but Ybelline had come to stand beside him, and she placed a gentle hand firmly on his shoulder.
Random was creating. She wasn’t taking the base materials out of which these various figures and sketches and paintings had been worked and using them to chisel or paint or sketch: she wascreatingthe item out of...thin air.
“Is this how it normally works?” he asked.
“No. Normally the Oracles are given the materials they demand or need by those who oversee them.”
“And why isn’t Random given them?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is this why she’s almost starved?”
“Dehydrated, but yes.”
“Do theyalldo this?”
“No, or Random doesn’t believe so. I think she believes theycanif they’re desperate enough, or if the vision’s imperative is too strong.”
“Why is she doing it now? There’s no desperate need—”
“It’s—it’s not the need of outsiders, it’s not the need of those who have never been handed the future—that defines desperate or need. If a puppy was going to be hit by a wagon, and it could somehow be prevented, the strength of the oracle itself defines what’s produced.
“The puppy might not be relevant to those who want a glimpse of the future. The Hawks. The Wolves. Think of the lives that might be saved, the murders that might be prevented, yes? Nor is the puppy relevant to the Emperor. But the concerns of rulers do not define the oracles. The concerns of the Oracles don’t, either—although as they get older, and if they survive, they can sometimes direct the visions. Sometimes, but never reliably.”
“And this?”
“What do you think?”
“I think she wanted to know what had happened to her friends. I don’t imagine they were allowed to visit again.”
“Allowed? No.”
“They did visit.”
“Not all of them, and yes. I believe she is finished now.”
“Finished?”
“She is ready to talk.”
Severn moved his chair toward Random; the table stood between them. Ybelline had skirted the edge of the table, but Ybelline, being Tha’alani, required proximity if she was to speak to Random as if she were Tha’alani. Or a criminal. The best, or the worst.
He had spent all afternoon in the grip of Ybelline and the Tha’alani; it was oddly silent, oddly isolated, to sit at a normal distance from Random and Ybelline. He accepted it. He could both understand why the Tha’alani were feared, and resent it. The resentment, however, changed nothing, and he let it slide. There was no profit in holding on to it.
Random had not been afraid of Ybelline. She’d had no fear of the Tha’alani method of communicating. She’d willingly, possibly eagerly, allowed the child Tessa had been to touch her and draw her into the Tha’alaan, or the children’s version of it.
He knew this, but had no idea what had been communicated. He wasn’t certain if Ybelline had known before she set foot in the Oracular Halls, but was certain she knew now. Her eyes were emerald as she withdrew her antennae.